16/Maryland Manual

In the area of human services and programs af-
fecting the poor and disadvantaged. numerous ad-
vances were made in improving foster care,
deinstitutionalization of the mentally retarded,
and expansion of day care and protective services
for children and adults. Public assistance benefits
were increased by 10 percent in fiscal 1980 and
by 11 percent in fiscal 1981. State housing pro-
grams for financing homes for low and moderate
income families were tripled during the first two
years of the Hughes Administration.

Economic development also received major
new impetus through large increases in the bud-
get of the Department of Economic and Commu-
nity Development, which expanded its programs
for attracting new business and industry to the
State and retaining those already established.
Governor Hughes led a delegation of State
businessmen to California in April 1980 in an ef-
fort to attract the electronics industry to Mary-
land and in June of that year led a fourteen-mem-
ber trade mission to Japan, the Peoples Republic
of China, and Hong Kong.

Governor Hughes was born in Easton, Mary-
land, on November 13, 1926. He lived in Denton
and was educated in the public schools of Caro-
line County. As a young man he explored the
possibilities of a career in professional baseball af-
ter pitching on high school and college teams.
Upon graduation from college he played a sum-
mer of professional baseball with the farm team
of the New York Yankees in Easton and the
Federalsburg independent team.

Enlisting at age seventeen. Governor Hughes
served a year-and-a-half with the U.S. Navy Air
Corps in World War II, after which he entered
the University of Maryland, receiving a B.S. de-
gree in 1949. Prior to entering the University of
Maryland he had attended Mercersburg Academy
in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and Mount Saint
Mary's College in Western Maryland. After re-
ceiving his undergraduate degree he entered the
George Washington University School of Law,
receiving his LL.B. degree in 1952. He was ad-
mitted to the practice of law in Maryland the
same year and started practicing law in Denton
in 1952.

Hughes was elected to the Maryland House of
Delegates in 1954 and served one term (1955
1958) in that body representing Caroline County.
In 1958 he ran for the Senate and was elected.
There he spent twelve years (1959-1970), first
representing Caroline County, and after reappor-
tionment the Upper Eastern Shore counties.

In various leadership roles, Senator Hughes
was closely involved in several reforms in educa-
tional funding and in seeking equity in State and
local taxation. The first major revision of the
State's equalization program for public education
funding came in 1964 out of a report from the
Committee on Taxation and Fiscal Matters,
which he chaired.

From 1966 to 1968, he was chairman first of
the Special Legislative Commission on State and
Local Taxation and Financial Relations and later
headed the Committee on Taxation and Fiscal Re-
form. Recommendations growing out of the work
of these two bodies resulted in the enactment of
the graduated income tax, a local income tax (pig-
gyback tax), a sharing with local governments of
the revenues from the State property tax, an in-
crease in the aid to education formula, an increase
in aid for school construction, and a grant to the
counties and municipalities for police protection.
Essential provisions of this program were enacted
in 1967. Its recommendation for a restructuring of
business taxes was enacted in 1968.

In 1970 Senator Hughes was named Chairman
of the Commission to Study the State's Role in
Financing Public Education. It was in accordance
with that Commission's recommendation that the
State assumed most of the costs of public school
construction, embodied in the present State
school construction program. Its recommendation
for further increases in State aid to education was
subsequently adopted.

In 1971 Mr. Hughes was appointed by Gover-
nor Mandel to head the newly created Depart-
ment of Transportation. His first task in that ca-
pacity was to consolidate and coordinate the
several quasi-independent air, rail, port, highway,
and mass transit agencies. Under his direction the
Department created a State program to provide
both capital and operating assistance to the
Maryland suburbs of Washington and to smaller
urban areas for the development of public transit
systems. It was under his guidance that design
and construction of the subway system in the
Baltimore area was initiated. In addition,
Baltimore-Washington International Airport was
acquired by the Department and major recon-
struction programs for both the airport and the
Port of Baltimore were initiated.